Computer parts create artful St. Cloud cityscape

In the Netgain CEO's downtown office is a unique sculpture made of computer parts that represents St. Cloud's landmark downtown buildings.

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Artist Katie Ballantine, shown Monday, created a sculpture from old computer parts of some of the iconic buildings around downtown St. Cloud. The sculpture hangs in the office of Scott Warzecha, founder and CEO of Netgain.
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Jason Wachter, jwachter@stcloudtimes.com
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In a lower level of the Federal Building, which houses information technology company Netgain, old computer parts lay gathering dust, waiting to be e-cycled.

But recently, local artist Katie Ballantine breathed new life into some of those obsolete parts by incorporating them into a sculpture depicting the St. Cloud cityscape. The sculpture was installed in the office of Netgain founder and CEO Scott Warzecha, who was named Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year for 2014.

The idea came to life while Ballantine was working to revitalize Warzecha's office. Looking at a large, open wall, the duo agreed that Ballantine should create a sculpture, something unpredictable to fill the space. Interested in using old computer parts, Warzecha found pictures of cityscapes online and sent Ballantine the idea: What if they made a cityscape sculpture out of recycled computer parts?

And then, he let her run with it.

Ballantine, a design consultant and visual artist who has owned The Ballantine Co. for 25 years, was intrigued by the idea. However, it was her first time working with computer parts.

"I've done other projects that were something that I had to totally figure out and engineer — I always say I have to invent the wheel every day — but nothing like this at all," Ballantine said.

For Ballantine, the shape of the computer parts lent themselves well to the architectural nature of buildings. She spent time photographing downtown St. Cloud, then chose which structures to replicate in the sculpture.

"Some (structures) are really literal and obvious, and some are implied, but I put some deliberate thought into which buildings to make identifiable," she said.

Because Netgain owns the Federal and Regency Plaza buildings, Ballantine decided to include those among the eight identifiable buildings within the sculpture, in addition to the Paramount, St. Mary's Cathedral, the St. Cloud Public Library, D.B. Searle's, Pioneer Place on Fifth and the Stearns County Courthouse. However, she also wanted to convey a larger sense of the community.

"I also tried to represent religion and business and the arts and the food industry and the government," she said. "Downtown St. Cloud — it's lovely and it's vibrant and it's diverse and I wanted to reflect all of that."

Plan in place, she then dug into the actual physical labor.

"I took home boxes of computer parts and dismantled computers — I can do it really fast, now — and had tables of parts that were sorted by shape or by color or by type of part," Ballantine said. "The piece sort of created itself after that."

"She rolled up her sleeves," Warzecha added. "What she could do with wire, and what she could do with an old computer fan is quite admirable."

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Artist Katie Ballantine created a sculpture of some of the iconic buildings around downtown St. Cloud from old computer parts. The sculpture hangs in the office of Scott Warzecha, founder and CEO of Netgain.(Photo: Jason Wachter, jwachter@stcloudtimes.com)

For Warzecha, the sculpture succeeds because of its ability to evoke each building's originality.

"Each one of those buildings has its own personality, and has its own feel when you're inside of it," he said. "When I look at the artwork, I get the feeling that I have when I'm in the actual building."

Warzecha's commitment to the local community also played a role in Ballantine's creative process. A St. Cloud native, Warzecha watched his father work in the downtown area for more than 40 years, and he remains committed to seeing the area thrive.

"Scott Warzecha is even a St. Cloud boy, and so this piece became — for me — also about Scott Warzecha and Netgain and their sort of deep connection to this community," Ballantine said.

The approximately 3-by-4-foot sculpture weighs about 30-40 pounds and took months to finish.

"Building it — creating it — took me a month-and-a-half to two months. Thinking about it took me a lot longer," Ballantine said with a laugh. "I laid in bed thinking about engineering it for a long time."

But for both Warzecha and Ballantine, the sculpture has achieved what they had in mind.

"When people see it for the first time, it stops everybody in their tracks. It accomplishes what we wanted it to do. We wanted a piece of art that makes people pause and contemplate. It's to the point where I can't get my meetings started on time," he said good-naturedly. "We spend 10 minutes talking about it."

Warzecha said he hopes to put the sculpture on public display during the next Downtown Art Crawl.